Chad Walker

Chad is a cybersecurity professional and an independent game designer. He is committed to using the tabletop role-playing genre as a medium for education and political advocacy, particularly in the realms of cybersecurity, national security, and resistance movements. Chad wrote "Cryptomancer" (2016), a tabletop fantasy role-playing game about cryptography, networking, national security overreach, clandestine tradecraft, and chucking fireballs at orcs. He was also a stretch goal author for Rowan, Rook and Decard's "Spire," writing about how illicit cells of drow revolutionaries can evade the authorities through crytpography and decentralized networks.

In July 2018, Chad releases "SIGMATA: This Signal Kills Fascists," a retrofuturistic cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game about ethical insurgency against a fascist regime, taking place in a dystopian vision of 1980s America. As a foil to the game's dark and frighteningly relevent political vision, SIGMATA incorporates playful nods to the 80s film that inspired this setting, including Robocop, Red Dawn, Terminator, War Games, Escape from New York, and Videodrome, among others, and features an art style that is merger of the gritty, cyberpunk styles of Akira and the vibrant colors and action-figure motifs of 1980s Saturday morning cartoons (e.g. G.I. Joe, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.). To top off the game's embrace of retro-futurism, it features a synthwave soundtrack composed by Irving Force.

When Chad isn't focusing on security or gaming, he... let's be honest, that's all he does.